"Do you remember standing on the steps of a church the Friday evening before Christmas—a little after dark?"
Gabriella's eyes began to express remembrance. "A wagon-load of cedar had just been thrown out on the sidewalk, the sexton was carrying it into the church, some children were helping, you were making a wreath: do you remember?"
She knew every word of this.
"A young man—a Bible student—passed, or tried to pass. You smiled at his difficulty. Not unkindly," he added, smiling not unkindly himself.
"And that was you? This explains why I have always believed I had seen you before. But it was only for a moment, your face was in the dark; how should I remember?"
After she said this, she looked grave: his face that night had been far from a happy one.
"That day," continued David, quickly grave also, "that day I saw my professors and pastor for the last time; it ended me as a Bible student. I had left the University and the scene of my trial only a little while before."
He rose as he concluded and took a turn across the room. Then he faced her, smiling a little sadly.
"Once I might have thought all that Providential. I mean, seeing the faces of my professors—my judges—last, as the end of my old life; then seeing your face next—the beginning of the new."
He had long used frankness like this, making no secret of himself, of her influence over him. It was embarrassing; it declared so much, assumed so much, that had never been declared or assumed in any other way. But her stripped and beaten young Samaritan was no labyrinthine courtier, bescented and bedraped and bedyed with worldliness and conventions: he came ever in her presence naked of soul. It was this that empowered her to take the measure of his feeling for her: it had its effect.